Pei Ye twisted his neck, already stunned.
The girl wore green and carried a single sword, her tunic tracing her graceful figure. She tilted her head and smiled. "I just wanted to say a few more words to the Bright Sword Master. How could I feel at ease letting you handle something this dangerous alone?"
"..." Pei Ye could not help laughing. He snorted. "You really are trouble."
Li Piaoqing stepped forward in her soft boots, squeezed in beside him, and sat down neatly.
"...What are you doing? Don't sit down. Aren't you going to the Azure Sky Pavilion?"
"Let's listen to the opera for a while. We've never listened to one together." With her hands on her knees, Li Piaoqing watched the stage, cutting off Pei Ye's wide-eyed look. "She sings so wonderfully."
Pei Ye paused, then looked seriously at the stage for the first time.
Just as the floor below was paved with stone bricks and the tables and chairs were neatly arranged, the stage was exquisitely and distinctively decorated, everything following the standards of the opera houses to the east. Though the materials were inevitably cheap, human care and effort made up for it as much as possible, without the slightest sloppiness.
An exceptionally young female performer was dancing with her sleeves onstage. With hair ornaments, powder, and lightly applied rouge, she was strikingly beautiful. Her voice rang clear as water, a single long breath winding through seven or eight turns while remaining astonishingly steady.
Pei Ye rarely listened to opera, and he truly had never heard a voice like this.
She neither looked at the audience below nor paid attention to the bosses upstairs. A clear, penetrating voice emerged, sounding almost cold amid the boiling clamor. "No need to speak of cloud-chilled immortal halls; born with